Aleksander Bardini

Aleksander Bardini (17 November 1913 – 30 July 1995) was a Polish actor, theatre director, artistic director, and educator. Born in Łódź to a Jewish family, after finishing high school in 1932 he studied violin and performed in the string quartet of the Jewish Music Association as well as in a Jewish cabaret. In 1935 he graduated from the Acting Department of PIST in Warsaw. He worked as an actor at the Municipal Theatre in Wilno (Vilnius) (1935–1936) and at the Polish Theatre in Warsaw (1938).

In 1939 he joined the COP Travelling Theatre. For the 1939/40 season he was engaged by the Municipal Theatres in Lwów (Lviv), where he remained until 1941, working as both actor and director. During the German occupation he was initially in the Lviv ghetto, then hid in a private apartment. He returned to the Polish Dramatic Theatre in Lviv in 1944, where he served as a member of the artistic council, director, actor, and head of the acting studio until the company’s evacuation in August 1945.

In the 1945/46 season he moved with the Lviv ensemble to the Municipal Theatre in Katowice. He had planned to join the Polish Army Theatre in Łódź for the 1946/47 season, but after the Kielce pogrom in July 1946 he decided to emigrate. Between 1946 and 1950 he lived in the USA, Canada, and West Germany, working manual labour and collaborating with the Jewish theatre in Munich.